The Rockin' Berries

Despite a couple of British Top Ten hits in 1964-65, the Rockin' Berries made no dent in the U.S. market at the height of the British Invasion. Much of the Berries' output reflected the lighter pop-rock face of the British beat boom, emphasizing catchy, carefully constructed tunes supplied by British and American songwriters, with high harmonies indebted to the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys. The Berries wrote little of their own material, and this, combined with the wimpiness of some of their recordings, doomed them to little recognition, and little critical respect, even among British Invasion aficionados. For what they were, however, their best pop-rock outings were pretty respectable. A career strategy that put an eye on the "all-around entertainer" niche, however, led them to record many comedy numbers that have dated excruciatingly badly, and also ensured that they were denied artistic credibility and fell out of the British charts after the mid-1960s. The Rockin' Berries were formed in the early 1960s when guitarist Brian "Chuck" Botfield was performing with the Bobcats, a Birmingham band, at the Star Club in Hamburg. Several Bobcats (including singer Jimmy Powell, who went on to record with the Five Dimensions in the 1960s) broke off to form their own band, and Botfield brought in some Birmingham friends to regroup as the Rockin' Berries. Vocal arrangements were the Berries' forte, with Clive Lea taking the harder-rocking stuff and falsetto-voiced Geoff Turton pacing their most famous, Four Seasons-influenced material. After a couple of flop singles for Decca in 1963, the Rockin' Berries signed with the Pye subsidiary Piccadilly. After a mild hit with a cover of the Shirelles' "I Didn't Mean to Hurt You," their cover of the Tokens' "He's in Town," penned by...